Sexuality and the Modern Woman: A Tale of Silent Tongues

Sex. It’s the on the forefront of everyone’s mind, and not only men, women as well. Women are slowly but surely asserting themselves in the bedroom, and learning to talk dirty, but is it enough?

I recently read an article on Women24 about South African women and sex, and a shocking percentage felt that they owed their husbands sex, and that their husbands exercising their “right” as husbands in the bedroom didn’t constitute as rape. What concerned me the most about the article was what it didn’t say: who those women are? This made me realise how little as women we communicate about sex.

I’d like to try something: “clitoris”.

Now honestly, how many of you jumped, or gasped or felt dirty because you thought the word clitoris? I’d wager a fair few.

Now I consider myself to be fairly stuck in the middle between prudent and down-right dirty, and that word doesn’t shock me. I’ve recently found myself reading a few websites dedicated to erotica, and was pleasantly surprised when I noticed that a decent amount (neither a majority, nor an equal amount) of writers were women. One that came to my attention (and that of Dorothy Black, sex columnist for Women24) is Cuntychopalops (http://cuntychoppalops.wordpress.com/) who openly shares her fantasies, and says things many women are too scared to say.

Without putting too blunt a point on things, we have vaginas. Chances are your partner (male or female) is not always going to be great at making sure it’s kept happy. Men are more than happy to masturbate during every hour of the day if they could, why shouldn’t we feel that? Have we as women been so down-trodden, and so objectified that we feel that we are merely the vessel for our men to enjoy sex, and not worthy of our own sexual pleasure? How many of us have the balls (figuratively speaking) to actually discuss masturbation, or our sex lives in depth with our friends?

We live in an age where information is at our fingertips. A BlackBerry, a laptop, an iPhone or even a simple Nokia can get you onto any website you choose, you can Google or Wikipedia anything, and if that’s the case, why are our women still so sexually repressed? Is it a case that the poor are not being empowered enough through economic empowerment and therefore the repression continues into their own inner-beings? It might take time for the less fortunate in our country to find themselves openly talking about sex, and I think once they do, it will solve a lot of problems in our country, but until then, what excuse does the enlightened middle-class and upper-class have for themselves? It’s not only poor people who are raped, pregnant at 16 or just generally living unhappy sex-lives. How long will it take for us?

In an ideal world, every woman would own a vibrator, and every woman would know how to use it. If they didn’t own a vibrator, then at the very least, they’d know what they liked. Having spoken to many a male friend, who wish their women would take a bit more charge in the bedroom. They don’t entirely want their women to turn into dominatrices, but perhaps a little more than just some (often faked) moaning would be nice?

Yes the internet has vastly empowered us, but to what point? Our online personas may speak frankly behind our curtain of anonymity, but is it enough? Are we able to allow that freedom of speech to filter through to our real-world personas?

Are we in fact, any more liberated today than we were a few decades ago?

3 thoughts on “Sexuality and the Modern Woman: A Tale of Silent Tongues”

I was one of those girls… sex was something that I was taught was dirty and wrong. My parents sex talk was “If you get pregnant I will kill you”. I was a “good girl” and din’t have sex. After getting married it was “my job” and all of a sudden I was a “bad” if I didn’t want to do my job. Eff that! I struggled with sex issues up untill last year. my husband and I decided to try swinging. I am amazed at what sexual freedom has done for my confidence and self worth. Swinging isn’t for everyone… but I do highly reccomend giving it a try.

Hello. I’ve just noticed this post via traffic arriving at my blog. Would love to talk to you about my new website of erotica. 50% of the articles are written by women and the site itself is ran by women. It’s called WordEjaculation is you search for it. My email address is on there to contact me.

I think it is imperative that women speak up about masturbation. Not only is it easier to talk “dirty” and therefore be a little more forceful and flirtatious in the bedroom, but it also lets women know that it is not weird, dirty, ugly or anything else one might feel about it. I have only recently started talking to my girlfriends about it and I really think it has helped my one friend enormously in her sex life. I think it has helped her take control, stress less and get more satisfaction from the experience of being intimate. Her boyfriend first suggested it to her and I backed him up. I think masturbation should become more common and I hope it is more prevalent that what is perceived.